No More Tears in Heaven

Photo: NASA/JPL

Drew Feustel, an astronaut currently in space with the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, had a small problem with his spacewalk on Wednesday.

Some anti-fog solution he had rubbed onto his visor started to flake off during the spacewalk. Since the anti-fog solution is really just dish soap, it caused a problem because it flaked off into his eye.

If you have ever gotten soap in your eye, you know its terrible, terrible sting.

Aside: I used to put dish soap on my glasses when I played hockey so they wouldn’t fog up. I didn’t realize this was a “space-age” solution.

So poor Drew’s eyes started to water. But because of the lack of gravity, the tears would not fall down, they just sort of hung around on his eyeball.

“Tears in space don’t run down your face,” he said, according to lead spacewalk officer Allison Bollinger

“They actually kind of conglomerate around your eyeball,” Bollinger recounted.

Eventually, he was able to rub his eye on a device inside his helmet to release the fluid from the surface of his eye.

So disaster averted. This indeed sounds like one of the ultimate #firstworldproblems